Christian Yorke

The following short piece was submitted to The Twisted Web by Tony Jones, the talented British novelist and social commentator. The scene involves two lovers of nineteenth century Russian literature who spend a few idle moments debating the work of their heros. 

‘No, I wouldn’t say it’s love. More like a deep appreciation of the Russian masters. I got almost to the end of Crime and Punishment once, at only the second attempt.’

‘So you’re more of a Kafka man?’

‘Don’t be barbaric Derek, he’s not even Russian…’

‘Indeed.’

‘You’re right though in a way. Most decent critics agree that Kafka is much funnier than the Russians. Bit like with Shakespeare or Faulkner, his natural humour constantly  counterweighs and intensifies his overarching sense of lost hope.’

‘I concur. In fact, now you mention it I’d go so far as to assert that his humour also humanizes our own fated intimacy with what is grave by permitting life’s fullest, most actual context to be brought into view even as it points us to an approved method of acceptance.’

‘Not everyone would agree with that analysis old boy.’

‘Oh come off it Richard, The Trial had me chortling more than a few times. Imagine consulting a bed ridden attorney! No wonder Joseph K was knifed to death for no reason.’

‘Hmmmm, I see your point now. Although I don’t mind admitting that the penultimate chapter, In The Cathedral, gave me nightmares. And at the end as K dutifully awaits execution and reflects “Where was the Judge whom he had never seen? Where was the High Court to which he had never penetrated?” A provocative plea by which we sense that K’s suffering may yet extend infinitely.’

‘Yes, if nothing else Kafka had an extraordinary narrative and descriptive skill whilst still bringing to his task a visionary insight, a romantic verve and a grasp of human character that seemed uniquely his own.’

‘Now I must disagree. That sounds as though you are describing Nabokov…’

‘Hey, Dick, chuck us down an ‘ammer!’ demanded a new voice.

Richard peered over the scaffolding to his colleague three floors below. ‘I’m on me fuckin’ tea break you cunt!’

‘Fuck you then, I’m tellin’ the governor…’

Derek rubbed his hard hat and beckoned Richard to sit back down. ‘It’s like something out of Chekhov round here sometimes isn’t it. His later work that is.’

‘And look what happened to him!’

‘Tuberculosis?”

‘Yes, like the lot of them. Except Dostoyevsky. It was emphysema and epilepsy what saw him off.’ explained Richard as he launched a heavy mallet in the general direction of his colleagues who were now watching a rusted cement mixer spin round and round.

Flash fiction is a short story of extreme brevity. It is said to have been around since Aesop’s Fables, and Anton Chekhov and Franz Kafka were both practitioners. Read on for an example of this fine art, called Procession to Eternity. I will be very impressed if anyone can guess who the story is about, particularly as you may need to consult your history books.

I am also very interested in reading your flash fiction, so please take this as an invitation to enter a marvellous competition. You can write about any subject, the only rule being that your story should not exceed 300 words. To enter you can either post your entry as a comment or send it to cy@christian-yorke.com. The closing date is later this month and the winner will be published in full on this twisted website.

I hope that you take part and enjoy the challenge.

Procession To Eternity

My view improved when the youngest guard lifted me above his head and displayed me to the armed multitude. Time was limited. I worked my muscles into a defiant grin and concentrated on my eyelids, determined to keep them open to the last possible moment.

I felt no sadness as I tried to recite the psalms that I had read from Henry Edgeworth’s breviary during the two hour coach ride to the Place de Louis XV. My tongue moved, but in my newly diminished form I generated no sound. The horsemen, who had numbered twelve hundred as they escorted my carriage to this place, had joined the pack. Beyond the scaffold I saw the cannons and drummers, and everywhere people waving their pikes and guns, their  innocent faces fierce, some seemingly in a state of rapture. And I realised that my perception of the beating drums and barbarous cries, that moments earlier had been so terrifying, were now a moist rumble.

The young guard lowered me so as to be level with his eyes. His tongue protruded. He stared at me making the most atrocious and indecent gestures. I was powerless to avoid the the jet of saliva that he fired into my face and then his fingers gouged my scalp as he raised my head to the grey sky. I sensed that I had but seconds left as I felt, or imagined, cold January rain striking me.

Marie and my my children were in my thoughts as the guard turned so that I faced my remains. I was still on all fours, blood spraying from the thick stump between my shoulders. My blood dripped from the axe that had been raised into the scaffold. I was no longer master of my eyes, my smile rigid. I thought once more of the psalms, sensing a new beginning.

So, now it’s your turn to show me what you can do. Watch that word count discipline and hit me with your best shot. Come on, don’t be shy, get writing and share it with the world right here at the Writer’s Twisted Web. 

Franz Kafka: everybody knows the name, but most people have never read his work. I was one such person until I decided that enough was enough and tackled Metamorphosis and Other Stories. And I was hooked.

Kafka was born in Prague in 1883. He attended the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague and attained a doctorate in law in 1906 before spending his short life working for a state insurance company. He pursued his writing “on the side” in his spare time, like so many people do today. 

He was the product of an overbearing father and, although he never married, he was twice engaged to Felice Bauer, his Czech translator. He also had relationships with Milena Jesenka-Pollak and Dora Diamant, who was his treasured companion until he died from tuberculosis in 1924.

Very few of Kafka’s stories were published during his life and he asked his friend, Max Brod to see that all the writings he left should be destroyed. Thankfully, Brod ignored this request and he undertook the posthumous publication of work such as The Trial, The Castle and Amerika.

There is a perception that Kafka’s work is impenetrable, worthy or even dull and irrelevant. All the talk of modernism, magic realism and existentialism turns many people off. However, fortune favours the brave as they say. And, as the translator, Michael Hofmann said, “…you need undergo no special training to prepare for him. There is no threshold of boredom or difficulty; you don’t even need to have a particularly literary disposition. He is formal but not unfriendly…(his work is) as approachable as it is strange, and as strange as it is approachable.”

At times Kaka’s work can almost be unbearably funny and absorbing. His work is not inherently sombre or grim and when read aloud, as it was by Kafka himself, people would fall about laughing. His language is straight forward; no redundant adjectives or adverbs. Although he does address themes such as hopelessness,  and his characters are often already in the throes of a crisis, the end has yet to happen and there is always the possibility of change. In Metamorphosis Gregor Samsa wakes up as a cockroach and the prisoner in The Penal Colony is already in chains; the jackals in Jackals and Arabs may yet find their predicaments eased and in The Stoker Karl may yet find salvation. 

So where does an adventurous reader start to get to know his work? I would suggest reading In the Penal Colony. This short story tells of a travelling researcher who visits a military colony where he is invited to witness the most incredible execution of a soldier. The officer/executioner, wearing tight-fitting parade uniform, proudly explains the means of punishment which is an elaborate piece of kit referred to as “the harrow”.

The officer proudly describes the harrow as follows.

“As you see, the harrow follows the human form: here is the harrow for the upper body, here the harrows for the legs. All there is for the head is one little spike. Do you understand?..When the man is lying on the bed, and the bed has begun to tremble, the harrow is lowered onto his body. It automatically adjusts itself so that it barely grazes his body with the tips of its needles…Trembling, it sticks its points into the body lying on the bed, which itself is trembling. To make it possible for anyone to view the way the sentence is carried out , the harrow is made of glass. Fitting the needles to it gave us many technical headaches, as you might imagine, but after many attempts the difficulties have been ironed out. We shirked no effort. And now anyone can see through the glass the way the inscription is made on the body…”

But all is not well with the murderous contraption. The officer berates the new commandant’s apparent failure to preserve the machinery of execution, to preserve fully the rituals. When the officer had, “…not without some trouble, forced the felt knob (of the harrow) into the condemned man’s mouth…the condemned man closed his eyes in a spasm of nausea and vomited. Hastily the officer snatched him up from the knob into the air, to turn his head to the pit; but it was too late and the spew was already all over the machine. ‘All the commandant’s fault!’ screamed the officer, and shook the brass rods in a fury, ‘the way the machine is being treated like a cowshed… And haven’t I just spent hours trying to get the commandant to understand that prisoners shouldn’t be fed on the eve of an execution. But no, with their new mild approach they do things differently. The commandant’s ladies stuff the man full of sugary sweet things…All his life he’s fed on stinking fish, and now he’s made to eat confectionary! But hey, why not, I wouldn’t really have any objections, but why have I not got a new felt, as I’ve been asking for the past three months? How can that man take that felt in his mouth without nausea anyway, when over a hundred men have sucked and bitten on it in their death throes?”

You may ask what hideous crime had been committed to warrant such punishment. The officer explained that, “This morning a captain brought a charge that this man, who is his batman, and sleeps outside his door, failed in the performance of his duty. He is required to get up every hour, and salute outside the captain’s door. Not a particularly arduous duty, and a very necessary one, because it keeps the man fresh for guard duty and for service to his master. Last night the captain whether his servant was discharging his duty properly. At the stroke of two, he opened his door, and found the man sprawled out asleep. He fetched his riding crop, and struck him a blow across the face. Instead of getting up and begging for forgiveness, the man grabbed his master by the legs, shook him, and cried: “Drop that whip or I’ll gobble you up.’”

Think about it. The trivial nature of the crime, the injustice within a strict military environment, the executioner’s anger about the new commandant’s modern ideas, the neglect of an instrument of torture. What motivates the executioner, and what should be his punishment? I recommend that you read the story to discover the executioner’s fate and whether the travelling researcher escapes a similar fate. The theme is dark and challenging but presented in a style that is certain to get you thinking…

Believe it or not, American is not even my first language. My uncles forced me to learn German (and I sometimes compose in that language if a romantic passage is needed-see if you can spot this technique on Snore Bitzz which should be our next single) before I left home for the mountains. Tiff insists on talkin at me in French whenever he is snarled up with the rage, which is most of the time, but that’s okay-French is my mother tongue.

After gettin out of jail I hitched a ride to Verbier in a juggernaut with three big-ass bull dykes off their tits on mescaline. It was like bein in heaven with those angels teasin me about bein a rock star. When we arrived  I felt dirty because even though I had a full load and was still emotional after leavin the Samoan, I knew that I’d been used. Whatever, I made for Casbah, keepin my head low in case I was papped lookin like a street sleeper, hoping to find Tiff.

The sun was still blindin me like a bastard when I spotted said Tiff on the terrace at T Bar. He was locked onto some honnies who were bein guarded by some giant bastards. He had probably been up for three days straight and was givin them the old tongue flick and using a bottle of Hooch like a phallus. I got him out of there just in time and settled him inside near some rowdy British swine who were gigglin like horny she-goats because they’d drunk half a bottle of wine.

Tiff was gettin the eye from everyone in the place and I was gettin the horrors because they were playin some faggot Brit band who call themselves Coldplay. Jesus, what I could teach those boys! Tiff had lost his baseball cap and so was in a bad way cos, even though he has the longest brown hair (at the sides that is) he ain’t got too much goin on up top. He was wailin about the chicks outside and what he had in store for them whilst strugglin to position a napkin on his head like a bandana. I told him that he had a look of Axl Rose and he broke down as I ran to the rest room where I laughed until the puke ran from my mouth.

When I returned I spied what looked like a Brit with his nose in Metamorphosis and Other Stories. I wanted to draw his attention to In The Penal Colony but the mescaline that the bull dykes force fed me was kickin in bad style and Tiff was holdin a beer bottle with menace in his eyes. I wrestled the bottle from him, I admit that much, but his reaction was bang out of order and what happened next almost ended our friendship. When I’ve calmed down I’ll spill the beans and tell you what happened when I first told Tiff about The Plan.